No ‘Gulf of Erlangen’ – doing geography like Donald Trump?
US President Donald Trump has issued a decree instructing US authorities to use the term ‘Gulf of America’ in future instead of ‘Gulf of Mexico’, which has been used since the 16th century. Google Maps, the market leader for commercial geodata and navigation services, has followed this renaming, at least for internet users from the USA – users from Germany are currently shown both names..
A current internet trend makes fun of Donald Trump’s neo-imperial renaming. It ‘abuses’ an option within Google Maps that allows users to add new places (such as sights and restaurants) to the map themselves. In the last few days, hundreds of new ‘gulfs’ have been named and located – from the ‘Gulf of Herzogenaurach’ to the ‘Gulf of Saxony’.
However, as Georg Glasze puts it in an interview with the German Press Agency DPA, this creative and subversive form of protest ironically illustrates how the naming of places, and therefore all geographies, are always produced and often controversial – and are closely intertwined with questions of politics and power.